In Stores Soon: Perishable DVDs

Makarand writes "Technology that renders optical media useless after a short lifespan will soon find its way into stores in the form of perishable DVDs. Retailers in the Southern United States will soon start giving a sample DVD to buyers of a CD (by Nappy Roots, a hip-hop group). This promotional DVD from Atlantic Records will work for only 8 hours. This promotion is aimed at finding if music fans would be interested in buying a package with both audio and video instead of just plain audio. A special dye sandwiched between the layers of the DVD will interact with air making it opaque and unreadable later. If this media catches on you may not have to return your DVD rentals in the future." We noted this 2.5 years ago.

This has been done already!

[MrFredBloggs]

[riverusers.com] unintentionally [foetusized.org]!

Re:divx

[trix_e]

One of the major problems with DivX was that it required a specially modified DVD player that cost more... these play in regular old DVD players (in theory...)

Re:divx

[ergo98]

Coupled with the fact that divx players would communicate (via modem) with divx headquarters, required you to have a subscription with them, and maintained a history of every movie you've watched.

Re:Or throw it in the recycle bin.

[will_die]

I live in Germany were they have fairly high recycling laws.

When I asked about CD when I was turning in some batteries I was told to toss them in the bin where non-recyclable items are put.

Re:This has been done already!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you never put anything to be displayed in the description part of the anchor tag you big dork.
Here's the link the moron above screwed up. [riverusers.com]

Re:This is great!

[Damek]

Which begs the question, "How many people will actually recycle it?"

Here in NYC we can't recycle glass any more. Stupid mayor. Now they want to institute a "pay as you throw" garbage tax, which I think is actually a good idea, but only if they reinstate full recycling.

So anyway, how will these things be recyclable? They're part plastic and part metal, right? They really need to educate people & city recycling programs about how and where to put these if they're truly going to be responsible about their products. ...as we all should be responsible for what we produce and consume...

Regardless, surely having no physical matter at all is the best solution! Ah, but then we have to worry about how dirty the computer chip manufacturing process is. Trying to be responsible is so damn frustrating sometimes! Maybe I should just give in and pollute to my heart's content!

Re:seal it

[Hadlock]

clear nail polish sounds like a good starter. that way, it has less mass and is less likely to destabilize the disk while it's spinning

Flexplay Enviornmental Impact Report

[buckminster]

Like many of you I was stunned that this story is receiving covereage without any comment on the potential environmental impact of disposable DVD's.

A quick search of Google turned up the following:

http://enduse.lbl.gov/Info/VideoImpacts.pdf

Flexplay approached a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs to perform an environmental assessment of the disposable DVD technology.

This report is truly amusing. The scientist acknowledges that he was not given enough time to perform a standard Life Cycle Assessment on disposable DVDs, so instead he calculated the amount of pollution that would be prevented if disposable DVDs were depoloyed as a video rental option. He theorizes that if 10% of all consumers renting DVDs did not have to make a return trip to the video store the envirnmental impact of increased junk being sent to a land fill would be offset by a decrease in pollution.

What a hoot. I guess Flexplay didn't bother to explain their marketing strategy. It appears that these disks are being deployed as promotional items which are handed out for free and are never intended to be returned.

Flexplay is also persuing the Hotel market. Just how much pollution would be prevented if a guest didn't have to walk down to the lobby to return their rental?

If this is the best defense that Flexplay can come up with then we must believe that the potential evironmental impact will be pretty bad.

Are we really willing to trash our planet in the battle against piracy? Hollywood's answer seems to be a resounding YES.

Re:no! don't do it

[gmhowell]

This happened ALL THE TIME when my wife used to watch movies. After the second time, the video store didn't hassle me any more. After the fourth time, they gladly played the tape on the in store VCR to examine a few minutes of the movie to check for the captioning. Of course, I use a local store, not a Blockbuster type place.

We largely switched to DVD's (about 98%) when we got a player. There was one HUGE problem: Universal Studios. They don't caption their DVD's, they put on subtitles. Now, your vision is probably okay, but my wife's wasn't. She needed the high contrast offered by captioning. Hell, I have 20/40 corrected with a normal field. Put in Jurassic Park and look at the scenes in the desert in the beginning. Yellow letters on tan sand does not show up well.

Anyway, I feel your pain. Or did. Now my wife is Braille reading books, and we are going to learn hand signing. (And looking into another Cochlear implant.)

Re:So copy it the first time you watch.

[uberdave]

Not so fast there! The carbon used in CD production is bound in a form that is unusable by the boisphere. With vehicle emissions, plants can use the CO2 immediately.